11-07-2025
What will Oklahoma's offense look like in 2025?
Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables had to make a bold hire this winter.
Venables knew he'd be looking for a new offensive coordinator just seven games into the 2024 season. He also knew at the end of the regular season that his back was going to be against the wall in 2025.
So, Venables took a chance on a young up-and-comer from Washington State to revamp OU's offense. Ben Arbuckle will call the offensive plays in Norman after the Sooners lured him away from Pullman. Oklahoma's new offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach has total command of that side of the ball, and a relatively blank slate to work with after last year's dumpster fire. Arbuckle will turn 30 in September, making Venables' hire a pretty risky one.
But what will the OU offense actually look like once the Sooners take the field in late August? Oklahoma has typically been at the forefront of offensive innovation over the years. Whether it was the Split-T, the Wishbone, the Air Raid, or the Spread, the Sooners traditionally have been early adopters.
From Mike Leach through Jeff Lebby's tenure, the Sooners have regularly had some of the best offenses in college football.
Each of the modern spread offenses has plenty in common with each other, but it's easy to see the differences on the field between the Veer-and-Shoot and the Air Raid, or the differences between the more traditional Spread schemes and an offense that runs multiple schemes. Tempo is another big factor.
After Lebby's two years in Norman, the Sooners were lost on offense in 2024, posting their worst numbers on that side of the ball since 1998, the year before Leach was hired as the offensive coordinator.
That brings us back to Arbuckle, who has a heavy Air Raid background. He'll get the Sooners back to a system that has brought them plenty of success in years past. The Canadian, Texas native played quarterback in high school in the Texas Panhandle. He initially wanted to play collegiately for UTSA, but ended up taking a two-year hiatus from the sport. Arbuckle returned to play two seasons (2016-2017) at Division II West Texas A&M, starting a few games. He got into coaching after that and spent the 2018 and 2019 seasons at FCS Houston Baptist as an offensive quality control assistant. It was there that he met his biggest influence, Zach Kittley, who was the offensive coordinator for the Huskies.
Kittley and Arbuckle coached quarterback Bailey Zappe together for those two seasons at HBU before Arbuckle returned to West Texas. He was Seminole High School's offensive coordinator for the 2020 season, before returning to the collegiate level in 2021.
It was then that he reunited with both Kittley and Zappe at the FBS level at Western Kentucky. Arbuckle was a quality control coach for the Hilltoppers, as the offense put together an excellent year in Kittley's Air Raid scheme. Zappe moved on to the NFL and Kittley was hired as Texas Tech's OC after the season.
Suddenly, Arbuckle was in the driver's seat in 2022, calling plays for the first time and serving as the co-OC for Western Kentucky. He and new starting QB Austin Reed had enough success that Arbuckle was hired as Washington State's offensive coordinator after the season. The Cougars wanted Arbuckle's Air Raid at WSU.
In 2023 and 2024, Arbuckle called plays for the Wazzu, first with future No. 1 overall NFL draft pick Cam Ward under center, then with John Mateer at the controls last year. Arbuckle took the open job at OU after last season, brought Mateer with him, and now brings the Air Raid back to Norman.
Kittley, now FAU's head coach, is clearly Arbuckle's biggest influence, and Arbuckle's system looks the most similar to what Kittley has done in his various stops along the way. But Kittley is a young coach as well, so the tree goes much further up for Arbuckle than just him.
Kittley's coaching career began on Kliff Kingsbury's staff at Texas Tech from 2013 to 2017, before he landed the OC gig at HBU. For part of his time in Lubbock, Kittley worked with Patrick Mahomes as an assistant quarterbacks coach. Kingsbury (Washington Commanders' OC) is one of the Air Raid's most prevalent names, but that staff also included Sonny Cumbie, who worked closely with Kittley. Both Kingsbury and Cumbie (Louisiana Tech's head coach) played for Mike Leach, and Cumbie briefly coached under him. Both coaches are Air Raid disciples who had a big influence on Kittley. That Texas Tech staff in the mid-2010s also included Eric Morris (North Texas' head coach), another recognizable Air Raid figure.
Kingsbury can trace his success back to coaches like Dana Holgerson, Kevin Sumlin (who is on a slightly different branch of the same connected tree), and, of course, Leach, who was one of the original pillars of the Air Raid along with Hal Mumme. That duo invented the offense in the 80s and 90s.
As you can see, it's not that much of a stretch to say that Mike Leach, who brought the system to Norman 26 years ago, has influenced Ben Arbuckle's mentor and turned Oklahoma's new OC into the coach he is today.
Arbuckle will have to learn the same lesson Riley did when he ran the Air Raid at OU. Running the football can't be an afterthought, as it often can be for Air Raid coaches. The sooner Arbuckle learns that lesson, the better, because it took Riley about half of his first season. But for OU fans wondering what their new offense will look like, it's something Sooner Nation has seen a couple of times before.
Quick passes and deep vertical routes are the hallmarks of this system, with Arbuckle needing to bring some of the gap run schemes that made OU so fearsome in the late 2010s into the fold as well. The quarterback must be an accurate decision-maker who can also push the ball down the field. Great wideout play is paramount, and the offensive line has to be rock-solid.
The Air Raid has more traditional WR splits than the Veer-and-Shoot. It's a scheme that will often feature four or five wide receivers. But, Arbuckle knows he has to mix things up and keep SEC defenses guessing. Simply throwing the ball on every down won't get the job done.
While Mateer's presence will help, Arbuckle likely faces a learning curve in his first year on the job. However, we've seen the Air Raid work multiple times before at Oklahoma, and Arbuckle has three years of play-calling experience under his belt. While the job at OU is daunting, there's also more talent to work with than Arbuckle's ever had.
One thing the Sooners won't lack is an identity. Arbuckle is an Air Raid guy through and through. He's running his own system that he's been calling for three years and was trained in by Kittley.
None of those statements were true of Oklahoma offensively last year.
After last season's offensive disaster, a coach with a distinct system, roots in a strong offensive coaching tree, recent play-calling experience, and a real plan for his offense is a welcome sight for Sooner fans who are ready to get the taste of 2024 out of their mouths as soon as possible.
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